Where All Roads End
by LeahxLeah
Summary: It kills John, those smokey eyes that can see through everyone and everything in seconds, but are beyond mere human emotions. Slash.
1. Chapter 1

Longing. A word easily broken down into two syllables, seven letters and a dictionary definition. By all means, a relatively short word taught to most children around halfway through their elementary schooling. An emotion Sherlock would've instantly regarded as, "Dull." But still, an emotion. A feeling associated with love, passion, lust and heartbreak.

All things he's never experienced. All things he likely never will.

When you can't feel love, there's no way to understand it. You can't break it down with a physical explanation or demonstration. It's just… there. And Sherlock, being a man of science doesn't believe in something he can't see, touch, or smell. The closest I came to putting it into understandable terms for him was saying 'It's a bit like dust, or bacteria. You can't see it, but you know it's there.'

Sherlock frowned. 'I've been widely informed it is much more pleasurable than germs.'

Leaning my head against the cab window, I attempt to soak the cold glass into my skin. Even in the darkness, alone, I won't close my eyes. The first thing I'll see is his face, and suddenly the hole in my chest will grow a bit deeper and wider. So I pry them open a bit wider, and even after a long day at the clinic, the last thing I want to do is go home. Where he is. Where he takes my stuff without so much as a glance towards me to ask for my permission and where he will touch me fleetingly on the shoulder in a way that reminds me of his presence. It does much more than that, realistically. It sends my nerves on a never-ending trip to heaven and back, feeling both fantastic and agonizing at the same time. Because those little touches I'm given, those small tastes and glimpses are what a life with Sherlock would be like. A life where Sherlock loved me, too.

Butterfly touches, I call them, as they are so light and delicate. The best way to describe them would be to compare them to having only one piece of chocolate—so hard not to have another, yet another leads to another, and before you know it, you've eaten the whole thing. With Sherlock, if I allow myself to lean in just the slightest, the urge might be too much to hold back.

It's three in the morning by the time I get home, and for once, he's actually asleep, lying in an awkward fashion on the couch. I take every precaution not to wake him, tiptoeing around the flat in a ballet-like fashion, avoiding flicking on lights. His breathing is smooth and deep, and when he lies still like that, outlined by only the light of the streetlamps, flickering inwards from the window, he resembles a Greek God. He's stripped off his jacket on the floor, and his skin is like raw, white silk thrown over his bones, making him look halfway between sinful and angelic, but flawless none the less.

No, Sherlock would never have any concept of longing. But I did. And tonight, above all other nights, I will give into it.

He can never know. This must look like it never happened. Just one taste. A sample, if you will, to indulge myself with on just this occasion.

I start slowly, running two fingers along his cheekbones lightly, succumbing to the warmth of his body and letting my lips land in his curls—the colour of Italian coffee, I decide. My heart pounds faster in the darkness, and I have to remind myself that he's asleep, and can't reject me. Finally, I lean over him upside down, pressing his soft, warm lips to mine in a kiss so delicate it would break if dropped on the ground. His lips are supple and I yearn to nibble on them gently, but he would deduce come morning as to why they were swollen, and would confront me with it.

I cup his chin gently, allowing my own lips to surround his lower one, bathing in his alien scent that was both erotic and sensual. I moved my mouth and his in synchronization, my heart beating so fast it must be a blur in my chest and my breathing growing ragged in my chest. My gaze flicked to his chest, barely concealed by a see-through white shirt and I found my hands leaving his face behind and burying themselves under the cotton and…

…stop. I need to stop.

Longing. A two syllable word with seven letters and a dictionary definition. An emotion Sherlock would never feel. An emotion I really wish he'd feel.

Probably the most painful one in the world.


	2. Chapter 2

Sleep escaped me that night. My eyelids drooped and my body ached to be still, but it was impossible to contemplate losing the taste of Sherlock on my lips. I had already mentally confirmed it was the best taste on the planet, and unlike anyone I'd ever met, it was impossible to recreate with anyone else; no one was like him. It wasn't fair that I'd fallen in love with him—me, someone who had always sat comfortably at straight, and him, someone who was comfortably asexual.

As a teenager, when you first fall in love, it's easy to think that if you change yourself, if you make yourself more attractive, the object of your affection will return your feelings. If you're just a little bit better than you usually are. It didn't matter what adult figure told you to be yourself, because the person you were at the moment wasn't in the arms of your "crush".

Come morning, in the bathroom, I felt like that teenager again. It didn't matter that my face was now covered in fine lines and that dark circles lingered below my eyes, because I still had those pubescent hormones pumping through my veins giving me butterflies in my stomach whenever he touched me. Making me silently sigh when he walked in the room. At least this time around I wasn't covered in zits and obsessed with the female autonomy.

I ran my tongue over my lips, happy to discover his taste was still there and hadn't been replaced by the flavour of sleep and that I hadn't just dreamed the entire experience up. No, it was real. Last night I'd kissed him, soaked him in while surrounded by the darkness of the flat. Had the lights been on I wouldn't have been able to, and now I had to face him in the brightness of the early morning and attempt to hide it from him.

I pulled on a t-shirt, unable to find a jumper or long-sleeved shirt without bloodstains or that had been washed within the last month. The floor was cold and I felt the hairs on my arm prick up in rebellion, unhappy as to my choice in clothing. It might be a good idea to go to the Laundromat today.

I took the stairs carefully, both eager and afraid to see him. Would he know? Would he open his eyes and instantly be able to deduce what occurred last night? Unlikely, but anything was a possibility with him. He could peer through opaque glass like it was clear, and put together the most complex puzzles as though they were the wooden ones designed for children.

"Good morning," I said casually to him, playing on my exhaustion as a cover for the turbulence I was feeling in my chest.

He gave a small grunt in response, appearing to be absorbed in the magazine in front of him. I knew better.

"Fake reading or real reading?" I ask, rubbing my fingertips in my eyes, clearing the fog out of them.

A small smile played on his pale lips, and I felt a similar one appear on my own knowing that I'd pressed my face against his just last night.

"Contrary to your belief, I enjoy your conversation even when the topic is incredibly trivial."

I had to turn away from him in order to mask the shameless grin growing on my face, and I felt my chest feeling lighter and my head blurry. Why romanticists describe this feeling as "love sick" is beyond me. It feels the farthest thing from an illness, and instead of wandering around blindly it enhances everything to a new depth. I can see every crack in the floor, and the cobwebs previously hidden in the corners of windows glow with the yellow-orange light that fills the rest of the flat.

"You still aren't answering the question."

"You still haven't unlocked the fridge."

"Why are you deflecting the question?"

"Why are you trying to starve me?"

"You don't even eat from the fridge, Sherlock. It's locked because I don't want to find a corpse in there."

"The corpses aren't meant to repulse _you_, John, they're meant to keep Mycroft from eating our food."

I scowl at him. "Mycroft has only ever been over here once, Sherlock."

"Twice."

"When was the second time?"

"When he planted the bugs."

"He planted bugs?"

"Yes, and cameras."

I froze. Shit. Shit, shit. Everything I did last night, everything I'd been so careful to conceal from Sherlock had already been revealed… to the one person I'd hope would never know.

Sherlock chuckled at me. "I hope you haven't been walking around naked, if not for your sake, than for the sake of the poor guy Mycroft makes watch endless hours of footage of us."

I coughed slightly, trying to conceal the fact that my heart was pounding way too fast to be healthy. "Must be pretty boring, watching us all day."

Sherlock gave me a slight smirk. "I wouldn't say that. Our lives are much more exciting than the average television show."

Holy crap. It must be like watch a gay version of the _Not So Young and Way Too Restless_. The blood from my face decided in would be a better idea to settle in my feet.

"Erm, Sherlock? Do you think we could ask him to take those out?"

"I'm sure we could, but I doubt he'd actually comply."

I sat down, hard.

_Alright. Things to do today: get the laundry done, harass Mycroft for the footage of me kissing Sherlock… _

Suddenly, a thought occurred to me.

"Sherlock, how come I never see you wearing the same thing twice?"

Sherlock sat up, putting down the magazine.

"There is no simple answer for that question."

"How many outfits do you have? Surely you must run out of non-blood stained clothes?" I ask incredulously.

"…" Is his only response.

"Are you embarrassed by it?"

"…"

"You can tell me, you know."

"…"

"Oh. My. God," I gasp suddenly. "You're a shopper, aren't you?"

Sherlock sends me an ice-cold glare. "Obviously I shop, John, otherwise I'd have nothing to wear."

"No, I mean like a shopping _addict_. Holy crap, Sherlock, you are!"

"It's not an _addiction_, John."

"Yes, yes it is. Exactly how much clothes do you own?"

"…"

"Sherlock?" I became aware of the pink shade of his cheeks.

"Let's just say I have more than one closet."

My mouth drops open, making Sherlock turn even more red. He flops away from me on the couch.

"I won't tell anyone, I promise."

**Ta-da! A much longer chapter two. This was hugely filler from the real plot, despite the hidden plot point: Mycroft knows. Send me some feedback, anything you maybe want to see in here?**

**A shout out goes to Lady Merlin, for reviewing on both my stories. I was going to PM you back but decided to promote you instead. Hope you don't mind too terribly.**


	3. Chapter 3

I'd barely said a word to Sherlock as I slipped out of the flat into the cold atmosphere of a winter London, but he knew I was after Mycroft. Truthfully, I wasn't sure that that was where I was actually going. It was one of those days where I knew I'd end up wondering around the city aimlessly; a plastic bag blowing around in a parking lot. Pathetic. Pointless. A shell of a personality, another face in the crowd, because the second I left 221 b, I no longer had that never-ending flow of emotions gurgling through my chest, and I felt drained. I was a tap someone had decided to turn off.

Think, John, think! I have to find Mycroft. If I were him…

What an impossible statement. The kind of thing I would only consider drunk: If I were Mycroft Holmes, secret face behind the British Government, the guy that controls elections in different countries, where would I be?

There is no plausible answer to that question. But knowing him, (knowing politicians), he wouldn't be anywhere without his phone. Except I didn't have his number.

Back to square one.

He had bugs in the flat. He'd probably bugged my phone too; because that wouldn't be something I'd think to check before making a call, unlike Sherlock. He could hear every word I said, likely. Suddenly I discovered an entirely new reason why not to speak of personal details over the phone.

Okay, so I'd call someone. Someone that if he saw me calling he'd be alarmed by, so that he'd have to intervene, have to speak to me. But who?

I stopped dead in the park, staring at an add on a bench jutting out with bright colours, designed to catch the average passer-by's attention. The words clung to my eyes firmly, and I felt a small smile twisting the corners of my mouth upwards. Oh, Mycroft will _love_ this.

I quickly dialled the number, turning and sitting down on the hard plastic of the bench, trying to appear casual and not attract a good deal of attention to myself.

"Suicide hotline, how can we help you?"

"Hi, my name's John—" I paused for a millisecond, fabricating a last name, "Holmes, and I've—uh-lately been thinking about just ending it all."

The woman at the other end of the line had a soft voice, the kind of person he imagined the government hired specifically for this position.

"Keep going, John. Talking about these things really helps get them off your chest."

"Well, you see, it's my flatmate…"

I saw a black sedan peek around the corner.

"He's so insufferable that sometimes I can't think of another way out of the situation. And sometimes…s-sometimes his brother threatens to hurt me if I l-leave."

The black sedan speeds up the street with renewed urgency, and a grin breaks out on my face. It swiftly parks, and I see Mycroft himself lunge out of the back seat, spotting me looking his way and quickly regaining his composure.

"John, there are alternatives to suicide. We can find somewhere safe for you to go, where neither of them will be in your life anymore."

"I don't think I can do that, though. You see, my flatmate, he stalks me. Everywhere. I can't even go to the bathroom without him following me there. I think he has a GPS chip implanted in my watch."

There is an awkward pause on the other end of the line. I fill the silence.

"He once told me that I was the only person he'd ever loved, and that he would die without me in his life."

"John, we have programs designed for people just like you—"

"—Oh my God, I can't talk, I just saw his broth—"

-Mycroft snatched the phone from my hands, pressing the end call button. I smile up at him, full force.

"Are you going to beat me, now?"

"You've got my attention, Dr. Watson. I assume you wish to discuss how you spent your time with my brother last night?"

My smile fades, the joy having been sucked out of the situation.

"Only if you promise not to hurt me."

"I don't know about that. I'd hate not to live up to my expectations."

I roll my eyes at him. "I just want the footage from last night. There's nothing to discuss about it. I made a mistake and violated my best friend, and we both know it."

Mycroft smirks. "It's a mistake if you don't mean for it to happen, Dr. Watson, and I don't believe that that is the case."

"Fine. Whatever. It won't happen again. Now may I have the footage?"

It's Mycroft's turn to roll his eyes. "If only I hadn't heard that excuse before. Then maybe I'd be more tempted to give it to you."

My blood runs cold. "What?"

His chilling smile returns with a vengeance. "You aren't the first to use that line before, John. Not even the first person today."

The world slows down a bit, and the children running around under the grey skies and bare trees suddenly become silent.

"Who—"

"Sherlock, of course."

"Why—"

"I can't exactly tell you that, can I? Any more intervention into your lives and it wouldn't be up to you to figure out."

"Figure out what?"

Mycroft let out a deep, dramatic sigh, then handed him a USB stick. "Never mind. Pretend I didn't mention it."

He rose from the bench then, with the kind of grace only performed by a Holmes, dusting off his suit as he went. What could only be expensive shoes scuffed on the paved pathway, and I let my clouded mind focus on the background noises of children instead. Giggles, screeches, and then a cry as one fell and scraped her knee, leaping up to her feet in a blur, throwing herself at her mom's leg and burying her face there.

Mycroft was several paces away when he turned back, twirling the jacket of his suit slightly, calling back, "Give my best to Sherlock," he paused, almost turning forward again before adding, "and Detective Inspector Lestrade."

It's late when I arrive home, yet again. Thankfully, this time Sherlock is wide awake, his attention entirely consumed by a microscope. He grunts as I open the door, not appearing to shift his gaze, but I know when Sherlock is stealing glances at me from across the room. His slate eyes leave patches of ice on my sweater where they linger, and I can't help but to shiver.

Suddenly, the space is too much. I can see him from across the room, and hear him too, but basking in his glory can't be performed from a distance. I close the distance, wishing to experience him yet again. Sitting close to Sherlock feels the same as lying in the sun; warmth licking your skin, clinging to you until the very contemplation of moving in the first place seems absurd. You're muscles enjoy the stillness as much as your skin likes the warmth, and his exhales are like gentle breezes. He's exhilarating and safe, all at the same time—jumping into an icy body of water and memories of previous summers melded perfectly into a human form.

I close my eyes, leaning against the back of the worn, wooden chair, letting my mind drift to fantasies of spending summers with Sherlock. Out in the country. Maybe by a lake? Tall, broad trees growing just above the shore, a wooden dock that smelt like cedar floating in a deep, cool lake. A crisp blue sky. Sherlock, reading a book, me pressed against him throughout the day until a thin layer of moisture between our bodies stuck us together as tightly as a shoe clung to a foot that was one size too small. Alcohol, but nothing too strong.

Then, the darkness of night blotting out the perfect sky and replacing it with a tapestry of stars and the scent of a bonfire trickling into their noses. No words needed to be said—no, 'I love you' or 'I can't live without you'—because it seemed to be written in the air with invisible ink. Sherlock wouldn't be romantic—even in my fantasies I accepted this. But he was mine, and that was all I needed.

Him, adrenaline, and criminals. The staples of life.

**Filler, I know. Not the world's greatest chapter, but I did get to play out a little S/J scene I had in my head: them on vacation. Sigh, the last scene is based on my cottage, which I miss right now (in the middle of a Canadian winter.)**

**Feel free to hate on it—not me best work, for sure, I'm studying and stressed right now, but I'll have one to make up for it next week.**

**Reviews make me feel good…**


	4. Chapter 4

Warm. Sometime in the middle of the night I became aware that I felt warm, and comfortable. It didn't occur to my half-awake mind that I had no reason to be comfortable, considering I'd fallen asleep in a hard, old chair in our typically cold kitchen. It did when I woke up though, and realised I was curled comfortably on the couch, lying in Sherlock's typical spot. I could see why he slept here, however, as it was extremely comfortable despite being a couch, and it smelt like him. I breathed deeply. He smelt…alien. There was no real dictionary word to place that scent, so soft that it made me bury my face deeper into the leather, sighing in contentment. I flicker my eyes shut.

This is what it would be like to wake up next to Sherlock, to feel his chest pressed against my back, and his arms forming a cage around me I wouldn't contemplate breaking. Perfect. So, so incredible.

A long, pale hand lands carefully on my back, gently rubbing in circles. I bite back a moan.

His face moves closer to the back of my head, his hot breath sweeping across my neck until he reaches the side of my face. Sherlock's lips are an inch away from my ear, and he murmurs in his deep monotone,

"John…"

I shudder happily, my nervous system throwing a surprise party just under my skin.

"Mmm," is all I can grumble out, a sound of deep rooted happiness.

His hand on my back is joined by the other, both of which are gently massaging my back. I. Am. In. Heaven. My body feels weak and I want to shake, but barely manage to refrain myself.

"It's morning," he whispers in my ear, and my chest aches.

I turn over, happy to have my face barely an inch away from his. Yet again, I'm overwhelmed by those pale lips, the perfect skin and those penetrating eyes. He's not just looking at me, he's looking through me—past my skin and muscles and into my brain, reading my every thought as though they were files found on a computer.

I try to do the same, peering into the blue and grey haze that is his eyes and attempt to see something behind them, to pick apart his beautiful mind and press against his black little heart as hard as I can, doing my best to make it beat again. I'm sure it wouldn't though, because a part of me knows Sherlock wasn't meant to feel anything, and the fact that he cared about me at all should've been enough.

But it wasn't.

I wanted every other thought shooting through him to be of me, for him to murmur my name in his sleep, to long to hear my voice. For him to bury himself in my sheets, pressing his nose against the fabric just to smell me.

I wanted for the tables to be turned.

"How'd I end up here?" I ask groggily, soothed slightly as he inched backwards.

"I moved you, obviously. Mrs. Hudson has many qualities she likes to keep hidden, but inhuman strength isn't one of them."

"So 'inhuman' strength is one of your qualities? You're the thinnest guy I know!"

_But what wouldn't I give to see you naked_.

His steel eyes soften to the colour of water on a stormy day, happy that he surprised me.

"My weight has nothing to do with my strength. I'm not 'thin', I'm lithe."

I snort loudly, trying to ignore the magnetic force pulling my face towards his. The north and south poles finding what they lacked in each other, their particles longing to be complete.

"Who told you that?"

"Molly Hooper."

"Well, there's your answer, then. Of course she would call you that. She's the only person on Earth who romanticizes your every flaw until she's twisted you into her ideal Prince Charming."

Sherlock smirks. "So do you."

I won't allow my eyes to widen, or my breathing to catch in shock. I've done that enough over the last two months I've been living with him to know when to not gape.

"No I don't. I know perfectly well you're a sociopath, and that if all the crimes in the world stopped, you'd start committing them."

The smirk grows instead of dwindling. "Have you read your own blog, lately, John? You do the exact same thing Molly does, except more carefully. You'd have to pick through every word to notice it, but it's there. I just don't get why."

"Oh, really?" I half sneer, "I would have thought you of all people could decode something so simple."

"Molly does it because she's infatuated with me. You have no reason to."

I sigh, rubbing my eyes slightly, and Sherlock shifts so that he's no longer crouching, but sitting on the coffee table. The leather complains as I twist to face him directly, and it feels unusual, how confrontational this conversation is.

"The thing is, Sherlock, unlike you, the rest of the world sees beauty in places where there is none, and finds perfection in people that are imperfect."

"Why? Why bother looking at the world through rose coloured glasses?" He's fascinated now, his cold eyes hooked on me as though I'm the answer to the most difficult case he's ever dealt with.

"Because life is an art, and not a science."

He clasps his eyes shut, as though he can hold the words in place against the rims of his eyelids. His fingers quiver before finding their way to their typical prayer position under his chin.

"Is that what love is, then? Romanticising the object of your affection until they seem flawless?"

"Yes. That's probably why you can't feel it."

"Fascinating. How about when people kill 'for love'?"

Here we go.

I roll my eyes. "Ask a psychologist that, not me! How should I know?"

He shrugs, then continues with: "What about love-hate relationships? Or all those songs?"

I send him a look. "What songs are you talking about?"

"I think it's by Rihanna…?"

"I _really_ don't think you should get insight on love from a singer, okay?"

"At least _she_ didn't tell me it was like bacteria."

"Give me a break, okay? You sprang the question on me late at night without any warning, so I didn't have anything prepared."

Sherlock gave me a look. "You should always be prepared, John."

With that, he stepped over the coffee table, heading towards the kitchen.

"Can I trade tea for more questions?" He asks, and I smile into the warm morning light, which sets every particle of dust alight, making them seem like fireflies. Him being curious had to be a good thing, right? Hope sparked in my chest, and despite the fact that this Q and A could easily mean he was attracted to someone, I doubted it.

"I'll try my best."

He nods, whirling around the kitchen as he goes, his body attempting to synchronize with the rapidly flitting thoughts in his mind.

"What are the symptoms of 'love'?"

"It's not a disease, Sherlock."

"It impairs your vision and causes delusions. It also makes you hot and cold, according to Katy Perry. That sounds a lot like a bad fever to me."

I can't help but chuckle at his bluntness.

"Sounds like you have it about right."

"Mm. Then how do I distinguish between love and the flu?"

"With you, it's a hell of a lot more likely you've caught the flu."

The light glimmers along the edge of his iris, and gold and silver swirl an elegant dance inside his eyes. Those black-brown curls have fallen softly down across his forehead, resembling cotton tarnished by coal, and his skin seems slightly warmer than ice.

The angle creates a halo of light around him, and just like the night I kissed him, he seems halfway between angelic and sinful. A dark angel, the anti-hero, who resides as good but leans towards the bad. He purses his wide, pale lips carefully, as though selecting his words before letting them escape his mind into the air between us.

"Would it ever…hurt?"

I smile sadly. "Yeah. Sometimes like hell."

"Why? After all, you're seeing a deluded version of this person."

"Even your perfect version of this person won't necessarily feel the same way."

He frowns slightly. "But if you see them as perfect, why would they reject you?"

_You tell me._

"They don't see you as perfect, I guess."

He turns back to the tea briefly, and with his back facing me he asks, "How do you know if someone sees you as perfect?"

He was going to figure out eventually if I kept this up, but part of me knew it was only a matter of time.

"I guess they'd compliment you, and stuff…"

Sherlock strode over, casually passing me the tea, then turning to his phone. It was done now, I knew. I'd laid out the pieces for him to put together, shown him all my cards and left him to figure out my move. I watched his half smile form on his lips, shown to me and only me, and our eyes met for a brief second as he pressed the phone to his ear.

His eyes read, _I'll figure you out, _and mine sunk in despair, saying, _I know._


	5. Chapter 5

**Second last chapter, my beloved readers! The final will be up the same day this is posted. Soak in the angst, and all reviews are adored ****!**

On the other end of the line was Lestrade, and every bone in my body ached in relief. He had a case. Something, anything to distract him from the "Puzzle of John Watson."

He sent that crooked smile my way again, and I felt like half of my body weight evaporated into the air, allowing me to drift upwards, floating above the world. I'm the only one who gets that smile. Me. Despite all the angst, the pain and the knowledge of how screwed I am right now, I'm his favourite. I get special attention, winks and hot tea delivered to me in the morning. I'm the one who gets carried to the couch when I fall asleep, tucked in, and then get dragged across London to help the most brilliant mind on the planet pull apart crimes as though they were made of wet newspaper.

I'm _his_ John, and while I'd always assumed being someone's possession would be abusive and hellish, I love it. I love him. And those words claw at the inside of my mouth, trying to free themselves into the space between us. I bite down on my lip.

"Ready to make all the medical staff employed by Scotland Yard look like idiots?"

"Always."

His smile lingered in place, and its warmth filled every crack in my skin, then oozing down into my limbs and crevices of my body. He casually shrugged on his coat and his scarf slightly, even though spring had crept into the city enough to make a change in temperature noticeable. Leaves were starting to form on trees and flowers blooming outwards, and rain had become common, washing away the topsoil from every bare patch of dirt.

Mrs. Hudson's timid footsteps could be heard above us, and we called a quick farewell before rushing out to the now thick air that floated around us. Clouds hung heavily in anticipation, and pedestrians carried umbrellas held closed at their waists. Sherlock let out a sound of annoyance.

"It looks like a thousand Mycrofts."

A laugh falls out my lips at how displeased he looks.

"Did he have an umbrella as a kid? I bet you both had a twisted childhood."

Upon Sherlock's raised hand, a cab sweeps forward out of seemingly nowhere, as though waiting just for him. A ridiculous notion, sure, but one starting to sound more plausible.

"Yes, he did. We were both essentially smaller versions of ourselves with less intellectual prowess."

"Wait—what? Like you broke into the Yard, chased criminals through the city and ate only takeout? When you were like—I don't know, six?

Sherlock snorted slightly at the idea. "Of course not! I _called_ the Yard frequently, chased school bullies through the playground and ate only cereal."

"Only cereal?"

"Cheerios, actually."

"Why?"

We stepped into the cab, immediately overwhelmed by the scent of the last passenger, who evidently was extremely fond of perfume. Cheap perfume. I coughed, quickly rolling down the window. Sherlock acted totally oblivious to my discomfort and continued with the conversation.

"I heard they had fibre."

"What's so great about fibre?"

"I wanted to be strong. Have muscles."

I turned and frowned at him.

"Why?"

"I was six, John. I also wanted an action figure," he looked down at his frame. "I got cheated out of both, it seems."

Yet again I was laughing, but the entire scenario seemed incredibly ridiculous. Sherlock, wanting something. Something he couldn't get. With his alien eyes and deep whisper of a voice, he not getting anything seemed wrong.

"I find it hard to believe that there is anything on the planet that you want that you couldn't have."

"Hmm," he said, turning towards the window, admiring the sky that reflected in his face. "Some things—rather unfairly— are beyond ownership."

Great. Once again a casual conversation with him transformed into a metaphorical phrase that led me to believe that he had some sort of emotion he was keeping bottled up inside him, and that it was welling up in the back of his throat. When I turn to look at his stiff shoulder, however, I see nothing. No angst, no bitten back feelings hidden under that wide expanse of cool marble skin. Just cold logic, puzzles and games tinted with a dangerous edge.

Suddenly, in the stiffness of the cab, I felt bold. The words escaped my lips before I could even register that they'd been in my head.

"Were you a sociopath back then?"

Immediately I wince inwardly, feeling like I'd just shouted out to him that I wished he wasn't, that I wished I could cure him. Entirely true, of course. I was a teenage girl that had fallen in love with a bad boy—the one that broke everyone else's heart—and I thought I could fix him. Change him, mould him into my ideal hero.

He's silent for far too long, and then he says, "Likely undiagnosed, yes."

It's my turn to lapse back into silence. Eventually I give a little cough and a, "Sorry, sorry. Just, ah, thinking."

His lips twitch minutely. "Careful, there. I'd hate for our poor driver to have to explain why the remnants of your skull are all over the back of the cab."

"I'm not that thick!"

"Oh, really? What is the colour of my eyes?"

"Grey." There is just no way to say "liquid smoke" and sound straight.

"Anderson's eyes?"

"…"

"Right, thought so. Lestrade's?"

"Brown!"

"Good!" he says happily, reaching over and patting me on the head. I'd be humiliated if his fingers scratching my head didn't feel so damn …_hot_.

"What colour are my eyes?" I ask, testing him.

"Mainly blue with flecks of brown around the iris." His face is deadpan serious.

_How the hell…? What the hell…?_

"Sherlock…?"

"Yes, John?"

"How do you know this?"

"Through observation, of course."

"How did you see that? You'd have to be really close to see…" I wracked my brain desperately, trying to figure out when we'd been so close. The idea of him being inches away from my face was incredibly enticing, so how come I couldn't remember?

_Face to face, when I first saw the flat?_

Not close enough. We were careful, then, in those early days—dancing around one another slowly, not confident enough to lash out in fast, graceful movements.

_Twirling round and round, trying to help me recall the graffiti? _

Arm's space apart, so no. But still. Those surprisingly soft, long hands spread across my face, holding on firmly but carefully, the tips of his fingers buried in my hair. Every molecule on my body had tingled then, thrilled with being alive. It was like standing at eye level with… well, the love of your life.

_At the pool, when our eyes locked and froze time and space?_

In those terrifying moments, I became oh so incredibly aware of the life I had chosen with him. I had chosen to be threatened constantly, to play with fire and run across half-frozen lakes. To be sucked into that exhilarating world that had wretched my eyes open and forced clean, cold air into my lungs.

_When I kissed him?_

Probably the closest I'd ever been to him, but he'd been…

…asleep.

He glances intently down at the floor. "For a doctor, you really can't distinguish the differences between unconscious breathing and regular breathing, can you?"


	6. Chapter 6

…**a finale I can truly say I'm proud of. **

OoOoO

_Fuck. So, so, so thick. Unbelievably so. Since when did I think I could outsmart Sherlock? I'm not Mycroft, or Moriarty. I've always been John—just John. What part of me believes I'm even supposed to be sitting next to him in this cab? I have no right. I'm not special, like him. I can't deduce someone's life story from their appearance, or even run as fast as him across London. _

Outside, the sky had started to spill open, rain pouring down onto the world outside the walls of the vehicle, causing the previously wielded umbrella's to open for shelter. Congratulations, John. Congratulations on making up half of your life, imagining it to be far greater than right now. Now the brutality of reality has shunned you into what you really should be—humble. Because your life is not a romance novel. Sherlock won't leap across the seats and kiss you. He knew, he knew all along and did nothing. He knew about your petty feelings that tore you in half and instead of acknowledging them, he pretended them away.

He's not the hero—hero's don't exist. And even if they did, he wouldn't be one of them. He's a "high-functioning" sociopath. Where does that fit into this little story I've fabricated? Simple answer: it doesn't.

"Stop the cab." Is all I can get out, my voice a quiet murmur. I should be shocked, should be blown away. Somehow, I saw this coming.

Yet again, my prince charming says nothing. I want to say something dramatic; the type of thing a character from a soap opera would do right before a commercial break. But I'm stuck. No words in the English language capture this hollowness.

Somehow the warm seats underneath me fall away, and I'm standing outside the cab, looking in at him. I pull out my wallet, blindly departing with the paper inside it as though it was worth nothing. Just a dead tree with a few fancy stamps, what I'd deluded to have value. I toss it on the seat where I'd sat, trying to memorize his eyes one last time before turning.

If I were in the corny soap opera I found myself wishing I was, Sherlock would take this moment to call out and stop me from charging away. I would turn back, and he'd have leapt out of the cab and would press his lips to mine. Instead of drawing gasps from the rest of London, we'd just get ignored like a straight couple.

My chest aches, and my mind is foggy. If anyone were to walk into the surgery with those symptoms coupled with delusions, we'd send them home with fever medication. Lucky sap. Instead, I have to grin and bear it, as opposed to loosing myself in medicated bliss.

That's the appeal of drugs—they're a sweet poison, an emotional painkiller. And when you've reached the point of using them frequently, you really don't care if they rot out your brain. So long as you don't feel it, don't feel life. And now, walking aimlessly through a city with enough dark alleys and shady figures hiding in them to be the tunnels in an ant farm, I'm tempted.

But I'm not Harry, or Sh—him. I have to stop naming him, because that last invigorating stare into his haunted eyes nearly tore me in half. Even now, if I picture them, I feel the claws of jealousy and pain rake me from the inside out.

But I can't bury him, can't lose him—I'm afraid to. Not only would I lose the adventure, I'd lose the warm exhale of his breath ghosting my face, the dark curls that flung back in the wind when he ran. Or the elegant long limbs, tangled within themselves when he slept; the ivory skin that could have made him resemble an angel, if his mouth didn't expel such cutting words.

Because. Because life was fucked up. And it made me fall in love with him, the emotion-dead sociopath.

He was like a shooting star—a streak of light and fire against the black abyss of the sky, beauty in motion. Not a thing to catch, to hold in your hand, as it would burn through you. Someone, some magical puppet master in the sky, had decided that it would be me who would become entranced by his passion, his temperature and danger. The darkness that was Sherlock Holmes. And after having caught a glimpse of those flames, those sparks, I had become smitten with them. Head over heels for the creature never meant to be loved.

I don't know where I am now—the buildings look cracked and dirty; dust attacks the structures with a vengeance. It's like I slipped in between the cracks in the sidewalk, tumbling down to a long forgotten Wonderland.

It takes me a second, also, to realise half of the liquid on my face is rain, not tears. Well, mostly tears, but there's no one else but me to know. Maybe Mycroft does, but that's because the laws of privacy don't apply to him.

I'm not lost. I never had a destination in the first place, so being here is probably the best place I could be. This hollow shell of a world, this knocked over sandcastle is always where I'd been headed towards; from the moment I first inhaled the bitter-sweet taste of life. Who'd I think that I would end up being? I was born into a middle-class family from middle-class parents, and the second I'd turned my head to the clouds my feet found a crack in the cement and I'd trip, ending up lower than where I started from.

My head had been up in those clouds when I joined the military—tripping when I'd been broken beyond repair.

My head was yet again in those clouds when I met Sherlock—tripping when I realised I was in love with him.

My head was in in the clouds when I kissed him—tripping when I found out how he knew. Come to think of it, Sherlock probably had always been the biggest trip of my life, and I loved those few seconds when I was floating above the ground before I touched it.

In the end, I'm always on the floor. No matter how I choose to act, to speak and to breath it's where I fall to—where all roads end. Sherlock just happened to be my favourite road.

OoOoO

I'm sure every man my age has been in a similar situation to me with this—standing outside a motel called "The Queen's Inn", knowing he sure as hell can't go home. Trust me when I say that the Queen has never stayed at this particular location.

The carpets in the front foyer are faded and look as though they had been stuck in an industrial size oven before being placed on the floor. Windows were dusty, as though they had grown sick of having to bear witness to the world outside and had chosen to close their eyes as an alternative. I couldn't blame them; I was here for the same reason. I'd walked until my blistered feet couldn't carry my weight any more, and now I just wanted to sink whatever flat surface they were willing to provide me with.

This was the place people came to forget that their lungs were organs to pump life into you, and to shove away any offered food to feed the machines that were human bodies. Their machines had long ago malfunctioned, and instead of choosing to take the time to start over and fix themselves, they'd chosen to die instead.

I don't want to die, but I'm really sick of living too. Floating halfway in between suits me just fine. I don't really know how long I'm going to be staying—a week? A day? An hour? So when I'm asked, I say three days. Seventy-two hours of solitude.

I've called in to work, letting them know how long I'll be gone.

"Is this about Sherlock?" Sarah asked, her voice filled with concern and an edge of something else.

"Why would you ask that?" I respond, not willing to divulge my problems with her of all people—my ex-girlfriend.

"He came by earlier, asking after you. Looked upset."

"Sherlock? Really?"

Sherlock and the word upset shouldn't go in the same sentence unless it's "Sherlock made someone upset."

"Yeah. Told me to call him if I heard from you."

"Are you going to?"

A pause.

"You already have, haven't you?"

"He's on the other line."

"Look, Sarah—I'm fine. I'll be back in three days. Thank you for understanding."

"You mean not firing you?"

"That's exactly what I mean. See you soon."

I hung up, turning off my phone as I did. I don't need Mycroft tracing it, but Sherlock would have to be a new kind of desperate to turn to his brother for help. As of now, I was forgetting Sherlock ever existed; at least for the next three days. He was a passing face in the crowd, a roadblock I'd driven past.

My fingers found their way to the light switch, turning off the light and sending the room into an abyss of darkness.

OoOoO

I woke up warm. You know the feeling—comfortable, surrounded by blankets and a halo of morning light. My favourite time of the day, before the rest of the world began their routines down below the flat. Also, Sherlock's hair was hilarious around this time; not yet brushed, it puffed out into an almost perfect circle. It never failed to make me laugh.

My muscles were stiff, but tingled when I stretched out, making me feel all around pleasant. I wiggle my toes all together then one at a time—pinky toe, ring toe, middle toe, pointer toe and big toe (my morning ritual since I was five). Then the other foot. Good. That meant all ten were still there. One of these days I'm going to wake up and only have nine, just so someone out there can have a good chuckle at my expense.

I roll onto my side, intending on basking in the light of the widow, slightly like a cat. My eyes blink ever-so-slowly, mentally deciding whether or not I should go back to sleep. Hmm, I could get up. _And do what, exactly? _No clue. Eat breakfast? _At five in the morning?_ No, bad idea. Sleep it is, then.

I drift in and out of consciousness on a fluffy white cloud, dreaming of flying.

_It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's John!_

Then, music from Peter Pan: _He can fly, he can fly, he can fly!_

Suddenly, I became aware of a warm breath, ghosting my ear. A deep baritone voice penetrated my dream:

"If I was a serial killer, you'd be dead by now."

I crack one of my blurry, sleep filled eyes open. Sherlock's pale, pristine face filled my vision. I open the other one, alarmed by the contrast of the warm room and his cold persona standing within it.

"Well, then, thank God I'm not five foot six, petit and blonde."

A grin split Sherlock's face, and a chuckle echoed in the depths of his chest.

"And a woman! I'm not female!"

"Otherwise you fit the bill. See why I'm concerned?"

I roll my eyes, squinting and groaning when I feel his weight resting on my legs, meaning that this wasn't a dream. He was real, and I was very much awake.

"I quite distinctly recall being upset with you, hence the reason I'm holed up in a terrible motel. Why are you here?"

"I was under the impression I broke your heart."

I winced.

"Correct, but you've broken many hearts before, so why are you here?"

He pauses, his eyes scanning the room, and I get lost in their calculating quality and those dark curls as he considers what to say.

"When you were young, you broke many things too, correct?"

"Yeah, but I was under eighteen. You're most definitely not—"

"None the less, some of those things you broke didn't matter to you. You broke them and they were nothing, just as they had been before they were created, correct?"

"Yes, but it wasn't peoples feeling's—"

"But they meant nothing. No matter what it was, you could always buy a new one to fill its place."

This time I decide to shut up and just nod. Sherlock seems satisfied with this, so he continues.

"For me, it was people, not objects. They were disposable, expendable and easy to come by," his eyes lock with mine, and I've never seen such intent in them, not even on the most difficult of cases. "No matter how little you care about these things you break, however, there's always going to be someone or something out there you care about. Someone you want in your life, someone you can't bear to see shattered."

His face is tantalizingly closer to mine, and his scent engulfs me. His arms are planted on both sides of me, trapping me in a cage of Sherlock. He's surrounding me now, clinging to me like wet newspaper to the sidewalk on a damp day. I try to trace that look on his face to an expression, but it's as foreign as he is.

"And who's that?"

"Anderson."

"What!"

"Just kidding. It's you, smart ass."

"Well keep going, then. I'm a human, we like being wooed."

"Alright, then," he said, gently lowering himself to the bed, resting on his side. I kept my eyes glued to the ceiling, twisting my arm on the side he was on up above and behind my head. He pressed his wide, insipid lips to my ear, continuing his dialogue in a low whisper, the vibrations in his torso tingling my side.

"You, my John, are my most prized possession—a million dollar statue, an ancient vase—whichever you prefer," his voice is such a low, husky baritone I shudder. He senses this, wrapping a long arm across my chest, sending an electric shock through my body.

"I love you to a degree that's obsessive—I want everything that is you, and everything that resembles you in the slightest."

His hot breath fills my ear and fans across my neck, spreading absolute bliss through me like a potent virus.

"You set me on fire when you're so close to me, and breathing you in is like the high without the withdrawal. If there was one sound I could hear every day for the rest of my life, it would be your heart beat."

I snort softly, pleased by the soft tendrils of his hair rubbing against the top of my head.

"Have you been reading drug store romance novels?"

Sherlock smiled in my ear. "Great, now you know all my secrets."

Only the sounds of sheets shifting could be heard now, the world a thousand kilometers away as he pressed his lips to the tip of my ear, sending my nerves on a roller-coaster ride throughout my body, my stomach flipping in eagerness. Those delicate, soft pieces of skin wandered down my neck, and I felt as though every piece of me was a live wire, sending sparks flying across the room. They opened and closed slowly, a kiss if one could be formed without distance between two people. Then his teeth were at the nape of my neck, nibbling so gently all I could feel was the hard surface of his teeth against my skin. Teeth retreated into the softness of flesh yet again, only this time to be replaced by the tip of his tongue, softly finding its way up my neck yet again, this time under the curve of my jaw. His lips find my chin now, and I can feel the muscles of his jaw pressing against mine; two gears getting tangled in each other's spokes, turning together as one.

Lips meet cheek, lips meet cheek bones—up and around my face as though he's sampling the bouquet before tasting it. His long, dark eyelashes finally found mine and mixed with them, light and dark dancing to a slow serenade that could only be heard by them. He draws back, inhaling through his mouth, sending a warm pant drifting down my neck and chest before he went in for the kill.

Soft, warm sets of lips met, our heads angling in different directions in order to accommodate the source of the friction between us. My hands went to his hair and his to mine, and I lost myself in the dark, tangled mass of curls that looped in and out of my fingers.

Our lips made slow, almost circular movements with one another, building up cadence with our heart rates; faster and faster, until under the force of him my lips parted, allowing the tip of his tongue to touch mine before they slammed into one another full force, a beautiful, powerful train smash of twisted metal and burning.

I lost myself inside his mouth—taste upon taste and taste. His flavour was almost identical to his eyes, the type of smoke that catches on your tongue if you extend it after a bonfire, mixed something deeper and darker, lurking beneath.

We were there for hours, sinking into one another and rising again; an experience not unlike floating on a large body of water and inhaling and exhaling deeply, falling down and gliding back up again. We were a symphony of opposites, filling in the cracks in one another until both of us were whole. I found it hard to believe that people out there saw this as an act of treason, or sin—we fit together perfectly, and gender had nothing to do with it. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson, combining all of our refined abilities until we'd combined to become a flawless work of art.

I suppose you might say it was all because of longing. A word easily broken down into two syllables, seven letters and a dictionary definition. An emotion some people will never feel. An emotion I really wish they'd feel.

Probably the most painful—and beautiful- one in the world.

OoOoO

**La fini! **

**Believe it or not, this is actually my second time posting, only this time it has a completely different ending (and a much better make-out scene).**

**Sherlock may seem OOC—but I wrote it thinking, "Gee, what would I want Benedict Cumberbatch to whisper in my ear in a husky voice while we were lying on a bed?" Don't pretend I'm the only one who thinks it.**

**My shout out goes to sherlocklover, who's cheerleading meant I stayed in bed all day writing this and this alone. I left my room three times, more or less. More of these (funnier ones, too) are coming.**

**So, for all my hard effort, I would love a review to death. I'm trying to make it to 50: only 8 more to go!**

**Thank you so much,**

**LeahxLeah**


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